SQL Server Version Usage Update #1

This, and the earlier, post highlights the versions of SQL Server that are currently deployed and the % of each deployment. It should be noted that this graph excludes Express Edition and only focuses on Standard, Enterprise, Web & Data Centre.

So 10 months on what has changed? Well actually a lot.

In 10 months the relative deployments of SQL Server 2000 have decrease by 30%. That is huge, and as we predicted. SQL Server 2000 was well and truly off mainstream support. But that alone was not enough to really push a lot of customers into upgrading. Instead many of these upgrades were forced by the hardware reaching end of life. A forcing action, rather than any burning desire, to move off SQL Server 2000.

The percentage of SQL Server 2005 deployments has remained relatively constant. Again this indicates customers are happy with the job this version of SQL Server is doing for the applications it is supporting. This looks to us like these 2005 instances will follow a similar long tail that we saw with SQL Server 2000 just 10 months ago, so expect these 2005 instances to be around for a few more years yet.

SQL Server 2008 instances increased modestly, but the real change has been the increase in SQL Server 2008 R2 instances. SQL Server 2008 has risen from 24% of instances to 41% of instances, clearly many of the old 2000 instances have been migrated to SQL Server 2008 R2. But remember this move to SQL Server 2008 R2 has been only over the last 10 months.

SQL Server 2012 was release well before this trend started. Over the same time SQL Server 2012 has only had a marginal increase. This is a clear indicate that there is a lack of love for SQL Server 2012, perhaps caused by concerns over licensing.

* NOTE: This is not a scientific survey, this is just our opinion based on data we collect from our customer base. We accept no responsibility for any inaccuracy with these figures, expect a high level of margin error.